Dek chuckled at that, laying a hand on Kylee’s back. “Come on. You can go to war with PA later. Right now, keeping Tip alive has to top the list of concerns.”

Talina matched step beside her. “Kid, just for a moment, I need you to dust that chip off your shoulder. Promise me that whatever happens, you’ll let Dek and me handle it, all right?”

Kylee watched the forklifts from the corner of her eye. She’d never seen the like. Last time she’d been here, she’d been drugged, it had been dark, and she’d only seen the inside of the hospital. “Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

“Not your most enthusiastic of promises,” Dek told her.

“Do you have any idea how much I hate this place?” Kylee stretched out her long legs, striding to catch up to Madison and the cart. She made the gate just as the cart went through. Glancing up, she got a real feel for the soaring perimeter fence, wondered if it wasn’t the most astounding and ugly thing she’d ever seen. True, Mundo, atop its tower, might have been taller before it fell, but this was huge! The composite of woven and welded wire and soaring posts went as far as the eye could see. All the way around the town.

She got her next jolt when the guard at the gate—a complete stranger—gave her a respectful nod. “You’ve got to be Kylee Simonov. Heard a lot about you. Name’s Wejee. You need anything? You call on me.”

“I . . . Uh, okay.” She returned his slight nod. “Wejee. Got it.”

The guy didn’t look like a crazed quetzal-killing maniac. Rather, he had kindly dark eyes and a really warm smile.

Stepping through the gate, she might have entered a whole different world. She’d never seen so many buildings. So many people. The grandeur of it set every nerve on end. Hers and every quetzal molecule in her body. Sure, she’d shared Talina’s memories, but they’d been impossible phantoms of places like Transluna, Earth, even here at PA. Fantasy dream images. Now she was seeing for real.

Her quetzal nature was awed, curious, wary.

All the bravado evaporated. She swallowed hard, let Talina and Dek take the lead as she gaped this way and that. Her quetzal self was glowing in radiant yellow, black, and infrared. Fear-charged. Anticipating attack from any quarter. Never—not even at Mundo or Corporate Mine—had she seen this many people in one place. Had to be thirty just since she’d climbed out of the airplane. And more were coming. Not to mention the buildings on either side of the gravel road. Hard to believe there were this many buildings on the whole planet.

Everyone they passed greeted Talina and Dek, calling, “How you doing?” “Good to see you.” “Heard you made a medical run to the bush?” “How’s it going?”